Interesting short article from Dave Clark in IEEE Computer: Fighting over the Future of the Internet.
For much of the Internet’s life, it has coevolved with the PC. The relative maturity of the PC could thus lead to the erroneous assumption that the Internet itself is mature. But as computing enters the post-PC era over the next decade, with mobile devices, sensors, actuators, and embedded processing everywhere, the Internet will undergo a period of rapid change to support these new classes of computing.
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Lots of goodies from RAND Europe today. Here is another just-published report, summarising their study on Policy Options for the Ubiquitous Internet Society:
This report has discussed and linked together technologies, connectivity technology trends, socio-economic impacts, and policy challenges, ending with recommendations for possible policies and approaches. It launched the concept of the ‘Internet of X’ as a generic description of the multiple of concepts that express the trends of converging information infrastructures, increasing computing power and its embedding in everyday objects, the convergence of humans and machines and the growing intelligence of the web. The report should provide policymakers with a rich account of what the Internet of X may entail and what can be done to support its socially and economically beneficial development.
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RAND Europe have just published a discussion paper on the Future of the Internet Economy, prepared for the Dutch government. Worth a look:
Openness and transparency are essential character traits of the Internet economy and should be embraced by governments as necessary components to deal with issues of privacy, security and active inclusive participation. The creative and entrepreneurial individual – organised or not – is at the heart of this development and the open Internet is his habitat. In this world government does not only ‘govern’ but facilitates, enables, shares, empowers, creates awareness and stimulates trust. Government will also retain an important role in ensuring effective competition and supporting innovation, through the use of open standards and the application of intelligent but not overly restrictive IPR policies, which support the innovators and not the concentration of market power.
National and international government cannot effectively control or regulate this space and needs to embrace industry, service providers and other stakeholders in self-governing and co-regulatory arrangements. Governments may back these up and strengthen them through political, financial and sometimes regulatory means.
The virtual and the real world abide to many of the same rules, with human rights and respect for personal space as guiding principles. Also there are risks and benefits like in the real world, which need to be understood and managed. Yet at the same time it seems important to only take measures in areas where it is seen to be necessary, because of facts, rather then because of assumptions, in order to avoid that unnecessary barriers are created that would stop innovation in technology and its application in ways that may well be of benefit to society at large. The Internet economy is truly global and diverse, which creates many interesting opportunities for all, and connectivity and access for all should be supported wholeheartedly, notwithstanding some of the risks.
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Thanks to CM for the pointer to Andrew Odylzko’s predictions for the next Internet decade. They include:
Many of the old battles over issues such as QoS or flat rate vs. usage-based pricing, as well as the on-going one over net-neutrality, are likely to be fought again in the wireless arena. It is possible that some outcomes might be different this time. The reason is that the balance between supply and demand is different. In the wireline arena, the growth in demand is still high, but it has been declining, to a level that is currently just about counterbalanced by improvements in technology. This produces incentives for service providers to increase usage, and such incentives suggest simple pricing and simple networks. In wireless, on the other hand, growth in data transmission appears to be significantly ahead of what technology can support, at least without major increases in levels of capital expenditure. And the incentives to raise investments are lacking, since most of the large potential sources of new wireless data transmissions are not anywhere near as lucrative as voice and texting. Users would like seamless mobility, but the huge gap between capacities of fiber and radio links is unlikely to allow this. So service providers will have strong incentives to closely manage their network traffic, and are likely to try to ration capacity and discriminate among applications and among service providers.
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Last month we held a small workshop in Brussels to draw on the knowledge of a number of external experts for the project. Here is a short report of the event — all comments welcome!
September 2009 Brussels workshop report
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As promised, here are the second and third parts of our state of the art report on Internet development. Almost done now, but still open to your thoughts and comments.
State of the Art report part 2
State of the Art report part 3
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We’ve been making progress on our state-of-the-art report on the development of the Internet, and how we got here — as a means to help us understand where we are going next. Here is part 1 of the report. Parts 2 and 3 will be coming over the next week. All comments welcome!
Start of the Art report part 1
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I spoke last week at a European Commission event where I give a brief introduction to our project. You can browse the slides below.
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The PARADISO project has now published an updated version of their reference document to reflect their conference discussions in January on ICT for a global sustainable future. You can comment at their website:
This document further develops the PARADISO vision and explores a new concept of progress that developed, emerging, and developing countries might share, aiming at a true sustainable development, a more sustainable economic growth, more equally shared resources, and eventually the well-being of peoples around the world, measured through a new index related to the progress of societies. The document also investigates the role that ICT can play in the hypothesis of such global societal developments, and derives the strategic research areas that can usefully be explored in the short term in order that suited solutions can be made available in the future.
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Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding has followed up the forthright comments on privacy last week from Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva. In a video message she makes the following comments:
“European privacy rules are crystal clear: a person’s information can only be used with their prior consent. We cannot give up this basic principle, and have all our exchanges monitored, surveyed and stored in exchange for a promise of ‘more relevant’ advertising! I will not shy away from taking action where an EU country falls short of this duty.”
Reding added that RFID chips would work only “if they are used by the consumer and not on the consumer. No European should carry a chip in one of their possessions without being informed precisely what they are used for, with the choice to remove or switch it off at any time.”
Mrs Reding also is concerned by social network sites:
“Privacy must in my view be a high priority for social networking providers and their users. I firmly believe that at least the profiles of minors must be private by default and unavailable to internet search engines. The European Commission has already called on social networking sites to deal with minors’ profiles carefully, by means of self-regulation. I am ready to follow this up with new rules if I have to.”
To round off this flurry of activity, the Commission launched the first phase of proceedings against the UK for “several problems with the UK’s implementation of EU ePrivacy and personal data protection rules, under which EU countries must ensure, among other things, the confidentiality of communications by prohibiting interception and surveillance without the user’s consent.” The UK now has two months to respond, before potentially being taken to the European Court of Justice.
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